Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department ordered border agents to verify that every
international student who arrives in the U.S. has a valid student visa, according to an internal
memorandum obtained yesterday by the Associated Press.The new procedure is the government’s first
security change directly related to the Boston Marathon bombing.

The order, which is effective immediately, came from a senior official of U.S. Customs and
Border Protection, David J. Murphy. It was circulated on Thursday, one day after the Obama
administration acknowledged that a student from Kazakhstan accused of hiding evidence for one of
the bombing suspects was allowed to return to the United States in January without a valid student
visa.

The student visa for Azamat Tazhayakov had been terminated when he arrived in New York on Jan.
20. But the border agent in the airport did not have access to the information in the Homeland
Security Department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, called SEVIS.

Tazhayakov and a second Kazakh student were arrested this week on federal charges of obstruction
of justice. They were accused of helping to get rid of a backpack containing fireworks linked to
Tsarnaev. A third student also was arrested and accused of lying to authorities.

Under the new procedures, border agents will verify a student’s visa status before the person
arrives in the United States using information provided in flight manifests. If that information is
unavailable, border agents will check the visa status manually.